"Judges and legal scholars talk past one another, if they have any conversation at all. Academics couch their criticisms of judicial decisions in theoretical terms, which leads many judges - at the risk of intellectual stagnation - to dismiss most academic discourse as opaque and divorced from reality. Richard Posner turns his attention to this widening gap within the legal profession, reflecting on its causes and consequences and asking what can be done to close or at least narrow it. The shortcomings of academic legal analysis are real, but they cannot disguise the fact that the modern judiciary has several serious deficiencies that academic research and teaching could help to solve or alleviate. In U.S. federal courts, which is the focus of Posner's analysis of the judicial path, judges confront ever more difficult cases, many involving complex and arcane scientific and technological distinctions, yet continue to be wedded to legal traditions sometimes centuries old. Posner asks how legal education can be made less theory-driven and more compatible with the present and future demands of judging and lawyering. Law schools, he points out, have great potential to promote much-needed improvements in the judiciary, but doing so will require significant changes in curriculum, hiring policy, and methods of educating future judges. If law schools start to focus more on practical problems facing the American legal system rather than on debating its theoretical failures, the gulf separating the academy and the judiciary will narrow."--Book jacket / publisher's website.

This book has never been opened. The plastic wrap is taken off though.

In 1977, when Zhongmei Lei was 11 years old, she learned that the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy was having open auditions. She'd already taken dance lessons, but everyone said a poor country girl would never get into the academy, especially without any connections in the Communist Party of the 1970s. But Zhongmei, whose name means Faithful Plum, persisted, traveled for three days and two nights to get to Beijing and eventually beat out 60,000 other girls. But getting in was easy compared to staying in, as Zhongmei soon learned. Without those all-important connections, she was just a little girl on her own, far away from family. But her determination, talent, and sheer force of will were not something the teachers or other students expected, and soon it was apparent that Zhongmei was not to be underestimated. Zhongmei became a famous dancer, and founded her own dance company, which made its New York debut when she was in just her late 20s. In A Girl Named Faithful Plum, her husband and renowned journalist, Richard Bernstein, has written a fascinating account of one girl's struggle to go from the remote farmlands of China to the world's stages, and the lengths she went to in order to follow her dream.

The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change is about the core of population genetics — the nature of genetic variation and changes in genetic variation. Topics covered include the nature of variation, the measurement of variation, multilocus dynamics and speciation. Particular attention is paid to methodological questions and to making clear the limitations of the models used. Although many of the details have been outdated by the advances of the last twenty years, particularly in molecular genetics, this is a classic of the field, and probably still required reading for population geneticists. -- Danny Yee

This 2012 Supplement is designed to accompany Waltz, Park, and Friedman's Evidence, 11th Edition.

This comprehensive anthology, edited by the acclaimed scholars of modernism, Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, is arranged thematically with essential readings from the Western European tradition symbolism, realism, nature, cultural history, the unconscious, myth, self-consciousness, existence, and faith. Readings include examples from Romanticism, the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century, the art theories of cubism, dadaism and futurism, and the philosophical queries of existentialism. Writers represented span the 19th and early 20th centuries and include Wilde, Rilke, Picasso, Baudelaire, Yeats, Nietzsche, Eliot, Joyce, Pound, Marx and Sartre.

In the most dramatic and intimate account of battle reporting since Michael Herr's classic Dispatches , NBC News's award-winning Middle East Bureau Chief, Richard Engel, offers an unvarnished and often emotional account of five years in Iraq. Engel is the longest serving broadcaster in Iraq and the only American television reporter to cover the country continuously before, during, and after the 2003 U.S. invasion. Fluent in Arabic, he has had unrivaled access to U.S. military commanders, Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Iraqi families, and even President George W. Bush, who called him to the White House for a private briefing. He has witnessed nearly every major milestone in this long war. War Journal describes what it was like to go into the hole where U.S. Special Operations Forces captured Saddam Hussein. Engel was there as the insurgency began and watched the spread of Iranian influence over Shiite religious cities and the Iraqi government. He watched as Iraqis voted in their first election. He was in the courtroom when Saddam was sentenced to death and interviewed General David Petraeus about the surge. In vivid, sometimes painful detail, Engel tracks the successes and setbacks of the war. He describes searching, with U.S troops, for a missing soldier in the dangerous Sunni city of Ramadi; surviving kidnapping attempts, IED attacks, hotel bombings, and ambushes; and even the smell of cakes in a bakery attacked by sectarian gangs and strewn with bodies of the executed. War Journal describes a sectarian war that American leaders were late to understand and struggled to contain. It is an account of the author's experiences, insights, bittersweet reflections, and moments from his private video diary -- itself the subject of a highly acclaimed documentary on MSNBC. War Journal is the story of the transformation of a young journalist who moved to the Middle East with $2,000 and a belief that the region would be " the story" of his generation into a seasoned reporter who has at times believed that he would die covering the war. It is about American soldiers, ordinary Iraqis, and especially a few brave individuals on his team who continually risked their lives to make his own daring reporting possible.

Max Fleischer (1883--1972) was for years considered Walt Disney's only real rival in the world of cartoon animation. The man behind the creation of such legendary characters as Betty Boop and the animation of Popeye the Sailor and Superman, Fleischer asserted himself as a major player in the development of Hollywood entertainment. Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution is a vivid portrait of the life and world of a man who shaped the look of cartoon animation. Also interested in technical innovation, Fleischer invented the rotoscope -- a device that helped track live action and allowed his cartoons to revolutionize the way animated characters appeared and moved on-screen. In the 1920s, Fleischer created a series of "Out of the Inkwell" films, which led to a deal with Paramount. Their character KoKo the Clown introduced new animation effects by growing out of Fleischer's pen on-screen. As the sound revolution hit film, the studio produced shorts featuring the characters interacting with songs and with the now-famous bouncing ball that dances across lyrics projected on the screen. Max Fleischer's story is also one of a creative genius struggling to fit in with the changing culture of golden age cinema. Out of the Inkwell captures the twists and turns, the triumphs and disappointments, and most of all the breathless energy of a life vibrantly lived in the world of animation magic.

Published in 1914, this is an essay on the prominent Jewish movement. Includes the colonization of Palestine, Zionistic theory, the Jewish Congress and more.

"On the verge of death for the umpteenth time, Anna makes a shocking confession to her grown children: an affair from her past that just might have resonance beyond the family. But how much of what she says is true? While her children try to separate fact from fiction, Anna fights for a legacy she can be proud of. With razor-sharp wit and extraordinary insight, Our Mother's Brief Affair considers the sweeping, surprising impact of indiscretions both large and small." -- Page [4] of cover.

Two of the Best in the Neighbourhood is a backstage account of the creation and continued life of the smash hit play 2 Pianos 4 Hands. (This volume also includes the full script of the play.) With contributions from the principal players of this story, including many from co-creator Ted Dykstra, Greenblatt takes us from the genesis of the idea to the blockbuster cross-Canada tour and to productions in the US, England, and Japan. A highly personal and subjective tale filled with anecdotes that span almost three decades, Two of the Best in the Neighbourhood is a glimpse into a fascinating chapter of Canadian theatre history. 2 Pianos 4 Hands tells the story of Ted and Richard, who grow up as "piano nerds," dealing with pushy parents, eccentric teachers, hours of repetitive practice, stage fright, the agony of competitions and exams, and the dream of greatness. As they mature, they become more aware of the gap between the merely very good and the great, and they come to the humbling realization that although concert stardom may be out of reach, they just might be two of the best piano players in the neighbourhood--and that in itself is worth celebrating.

"This book examines the phenomenon of visual scotoma that is known as migraine aura (whether in tandem with a headache or not); it has intrigued humankind since the dawn of time, yet this is the first book to inform and reassure the many sufferers. With suggestions for healing"--Provided by publisher.

"The Voidoid was written in 1973 in a little furnished room on East 10th Street. I was staying down the block overlooking the graveyard at St Mark's Church. Every day I'd take a cheap bottle of wine with me across the street to the $16-a-week room I'd rented for writing. Sometimes afterwards if l had some extra money I'd go the pharmacy on Second Avenue and buy a bottle of codeine cough syrup and come back and lie on the cot again...